Can't Pass A Background Check To Buy Guns? No Problem.

January 31, 2011 2:03 pm ET
- by Chris Brown

In the days
following the Tucson shooting that left six people dead and Rep. Gabrielle
Giffords (D-AZ) in critical condition, New York City sent undercover investigators
to an Arizona gun show to explore how easy it was to buy weapons without a
background check. Just 15 days after the shooting, and just over 100
miles from where it happened, the investigators bought a Glock and a 33-round
magazine — with no background check.

This new
investigation is an expansion of the original 2009 Gun Show Undercover operation, which
documented sales at seven gun shows in three states: Ohio, Tennessee and
Nevada. At all locations investigators identified private sellers that failed
integrity tests. An integrity test is the legal standard that private
sellers are held to and means, if a private seller "knows" or
"has reason to believe" the buyer is in a prohibited category, such
as felons and drug abusers, it is illegal to go through with the sale.

In two instances, the New York
undercover officers specifically said before buying a gun, "I probably couldn't
pass a background check," but were still sold guns, city officials said.

In a third case, an investigator bought
a Glock pistol and two high-capacity magazines like the ones used in the Tucson
shooting. Such purchases were made without any background check but were
perfectly legal. [....]

According to a transcript from one
investigator's purchase of a Sig Sauer pistol at the Phoenix show, the exchange
went like this:

Investigator: "So, you're not one of
those, you know, dealer guys, right?"

Seller: "No. No tax, no form, you don't
have to do transfers or nothing."

Investigator: "Yeah, yeah."

Seller: "Just see an Arizona ID and
that's it with me."

Investigator: "So no background check?"

Seller: "No."

Investigator: "That's good, because
I probably couldn't pass one, you know what I mean?"

The seller sold the gun for $500.

Guns
purchased in Arizona were also the focus of a recent federal indictment accusing
20 people of participating in a gun ring that allegedly purchased more than 700
guns to smuggle into Mexico to arm Mexican drug cartels. The logistics of
making mass purchases of firearms didn't appear any more difficult than
bypassing the federal background check system at gun shows:

Officials say one buyer who is accused
of making six buys for the ring purchased 48 guns.

In all, 560 of the ring's guns were
recovered, a third in Mexico and the rest mostly in Arizona.

The indictment was unsealed Tuesday and
will likely renew the nation's gun law debate in the wake of the Tucson
shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

According to MSNBC, officials said the alleged "straw
buyers" had no trouble buying the guns and passing federal background
checks despite buying multiple firearms and spending large amounts of cash. In
one case, seven people spent $104,251 in cash at several Phoenix-area dealers
to purchase 140 firearms, according to officials.

Indeed, the
federal indictment indicates the smugglers purchased 600 of the 700 arms at a single gun store:

According to the indictment, ATF
officials determined that more than 600 of the 700 guns purchased by the
network had come from a single U.S. gun store, Lone Wolf Trading Co. in
Glendale, Ariz., a Phoenix suburb. Lone Wolf was not charged with any
wrongdoing.

Last year, The Post reported that Lone Wolf ranked first among
U.S. stores with the most guns traced to Mexican crime scenes, with 185
firearms traced to Mexico over a two-year period.